Ultrasound-guided pericapsular nerve group (PENG) block for early analgesia in elderly patients with hip fractures: a single-center prospective randomized controlled study.

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of ultrasound-guided PENG (pericapsular nerve group) block and drug therapy with intravenous flurbiprofen for early analgesia in elderly patients with hip fractures after hospitalization. METHODS: This is a single-center, observer-blinded, prospective, randomized, controlled trial. A total of 41 elderly patients (aged 60 or older) with hip fractures were enrolled in the current study. Patients were randomly assigned to two groups: Group P (ultrasound-guided PENG block, 20 mL of 0.375% ropivacaine) and Group F (intravenous flurbiprofen 50 mg). The primary outcome measure was the dynamic (passive straight leg raising 15°) NRS (numerical rating scale 0 to 10) pain scores at different time points. The secondary outcomes were the static NRS scores at different time points, the number of rescue analgesia sessions, patient satisfaction, and the incidence of complications. RESULTS: Patients in the two groups had comparable baseline characteristics. The group P had lower dynamic and static NRS scores at 15 min, 30 min, 6 h, and 12 h after intervention (P<0.05) than the group F. The highest NRS pain scores in the group P were still lower than the NRS scores in the group F at 30 min-12 h (Group F: 5.57±1.54 vs. Group P: 3.00±1.12, P<0.001), and there was no significant difference between the two groups at 12-24 h (Group F: 6.35±1.79 vs. Group P: 5.90±1.83, P>0.05). The group P had higher satisfaction scores (Group P: 9 (9,9) vs. Group F: 8 (7,8), P<0.001). There was no statistically significant difference in the number of rescue analgesics at 0-12 h or 12-24 h or the incidence of complications between the groups. CONCLUSIONS: Compared with intravenous flurbiprofen, ultrasound-guided PENG block provides better early analgesic effects in elderly patients with hip fractures, and a PENG block is safe for elderly patients with hip fractures after hospitalization. Trial registration This study was registered in the Chinese Clinical Trial Testing Center (ID: ChiCTR2200062400).

Structure and Physical Properties of the Layered Titanium-Based Pnictide Oxides (EuF)2Ti2Pn2O (Pn = Sb, Bi).

We report two novel titanium-based pnictide oxide compounds (EuF)2Ti2Pn2O (Pn = Sb, Bi), which are synthesized by replacing Sr2+ in (SrF)2Ti2Pn2O [Liu, R. H. Structure and Physical Properties of the Layered Pnictide-Oxides: (SrF)2Ti2Pn2O (Pn = As, Sb) and (SmO)2Ti2Sb2O. Chem. Mater. 2010, 22, 1503-1508] with Eu2+ using a solid-state reaction. (EuF)2Ti2Sb2O exhibits an obvious anomaly in resistivity and heat capacity at T ∼ 195 K, which may arise from the spin-density wave/charge-density wave instability. Similar features are also observed in BaTi2Pn2O, (SrF)2Ti2Pn2O, and Na2Ti2Pn2O (Pn = As and Sb) [Liu, R. H. Structure and Physical Properties of the Layered Pnictide-Oxides: (SrF)2Ti2Pn2O (Pn = As, Sb) and (SmO)2Ti2Sb2O. Chem. Mater. 2010, 22, 1503-1508, Ozawa, T. C. Chemistry of layered d-metal pnictide oxides and their potential as candidates for new superconductors. Sci. Technol. Adv. Mater. 2008, 9, 033003, Wang, X. F. Structure and physical properties for a new layered pnictide-oxide: BaTi2As2O. J. Phys.: Condens. Matter. 2010, 22, 075702, and Xu, H. C. Electronic structure of the BaTi2As2O parent compound of the titanium-based oxypnictide superconductor. Phys. Rev. B 2014, 89, 155108]. Magnetic susceptibility measurements indicate an antiferromagnetic transition at T ∼ 2.5 K for (EuF)2Ti2Sb2O. In particular, the electronic specific heat coefficients of both (EuF)2Ti2Sb2O and (EuF)2Ti2Bi2O are significantly enhanced compared to those of (SrF)2Ti2Pn2O, Na2Ti2Pn2O, and BaTi2Pn2O,1,5,6 which may be due to a strong electron correlation effect in this system. Thus, (EuF)2Ti2Pn2O (Pn = Sb, Bi) may provide new platforms for studying density wave, magnetic ordering, and electron correlation effects.

Vinpocetine Attenuates Pathological Cardiac Remodeling by Inhibiting Cardiac Hypertrophy and Fibrosis.

PURPOSE: Pathological cardiac remodeling, characterized by cardiac hypertrophy and fibrosis, is a pathological feature of many cardiac disorders that leads to heart failure and cardiac arrest. Vinpocetine, a derivative of the alkaloid vincamine, has been used for enhancing cerebral blood flow to treat cognitive impairment. However, its role in pathological cardiac remodeling remains unknown. The aim of this study is to examine the effect of vinpocetine on pathological cardiac remodeling induced by chronic stimulation with angiotensin II (Ang II). METHODS: Mice received Ang II infusion via osmotic pumps in the presence of vehicle or vinpocetine. Cardiac hypertrophy and fibrosis were assessed by morphological, histological, and biochemical analyses. Mechanistic studies were carried out in vitro with isolated mouse adult cardiac myocytes and fibroblasts. RESULTS: We showed that chronic Ang II infusion caused cardiac hypertrophy and fibrosis, which were all significantly attenuated by systemic administration of vinpocetine. In isolated adult mouse cardiomyocytes, vinpocetine suppressed Ang II-stimulated myocyte hypertrophic growth. In cultured cardiac fibroblasts, vinpocetine suppressed TGFß-induced fibroblast activation and matrix gene expression, consistent with its effect in attenuating cardiac fibrosis. The effects of vinpocetine on cardiac myocyte hypertrophy and fibroblast activation are likely mediated by targeting cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterase 1 (PDE1). CONCLUSIONS: Our results reveal a novel protective effect of vinpocetine in attenuating pathological cardiac remodeling through suppressing cardiac myocyte hypertrophic growth and fibroblast activation and fibrotic gene expression. These studies may also shed light on developing novel therapeutic agents for antagonizing pathological cardiac remodeling.

The effect of celecoxib on DNA methylation of CDH13, TFPI2, and FSTL1 in squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus in vivo.

This study examined the in-vivo effect of the NSAID celecoxib on DNA methylation in the promoter region of the tumor-suppressor genes cadherin 13, tissue factor pathway inhibitor 12, and follistatin-like protein 1, and on apoptosis, in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). Forty-five patients who underwent an esophagectomy for ESCC were allocated to either a treatment group (n=22) or a control group (n=23). Patients in the treatment group were administered 800 mg/day of celecoxib for 14 days before surgery. Patients in the control group did not take any type of NSAID. Biopsies of the tumor were collected before surgery and tissue from the resection specimens after surgery. Methylation-specific PCR was used to measure DNA methylation and apoptosis was measured by flow cytometry. There was no difference in the proportion of patients with methylation for each of the genes between the patient groups before treatment. In those patients with pretreatment methylation, there was a significant reduction in the proportion with methylation and a significant increase in the corresponding messenger RNA expression after treatment with celecoxib. In those tissues in which there was a reduction in methylation following celecoxib treatment, there was a significant increase in the percentage of apoptotic cells, but not in the tissues with no change in methylation. In ESCC, in-vivo treatment with celecoxib is associated with a reduction in DNA methylation and increase in messenger RNA expression of tumor-suppressor genes, and increases in apoptosis.

Higenamine protects ischemia/reperfusion induced cardiac injury and myocyte apoptosis through activation of ß2-AR/PI3K/AKT signaling pathway.

Cardiomyocyte apoptosis contributes to ischemic cardiac injury and the development of heart failure. Higenamine is a key component of the Chinese herb aconite root that has been prescribed for treating symptoms of heart failure for thousands of years in the oriental Asian countries. It has been shown that higenamine has anti-apoptotic effects in a few cell types including cardiomyocytes. However, the pharmacological target and molecular mechanism of higenamine in the heart are still not fully illustrated. Herein, we report that higenamine protected myocyte apoptosis and ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury through selective activation of beta2-adrenergic receptor (ß2-AR). In particular, we show that higenamine significantly reduced I/R-induced myocardial infarction in mice. In both primary neonatal rat and adult mouse ventricular myocytes, we show higenamine inhibited cell apoptosis and also reduced biochemical markers of apoptosis such as cleaved caspase 3 and 9. More importantly, we show that the anti-apoptotic effects of higenamine in cardiomyocytes were completely abolished by ß2-AR but not ß1-AR antagonism. Furthermore, we confirmed that higenamine attenuated I/R-induced myocardial injury and reduced cleaved caspases in a ß2-AR dependent manner in intact mouse hearts. Higenamine stimulated AKT phosphorylation and required PI3K activation for the anti-apoptotic effect in cardiomyocytes. These findings together suggest that anti-apoptotic and cardiac protective effects of higenamine are mediated by the ß2-AR/PI3K/AKT cascade.

Nuclear cardiac myosin light chain 2 modulates NADPH oxidase 2 expression in myocardium: a novel function beyond muscle contraction.

Recent studies demonstrated that NADPH oxidase 2 (NOX2) expression in myocardium after ischemia-reperfusion (IR) is significantly upregulated. However, the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. This study aims to determine if nuclear cardiac myosin light chain 2 (MYL2), a well-known regulatory subunit of myosin, functions as a transcription factor to promote NOX2 expression following myocardial IR in a phosphorylation-dependent manner. We examined the phosphorylation status of nuclear MYL2 (p-MYL2) in a rat model of myocardial IR (left main coronary artery subjected to 1 h ligation and 3 h reperfusion) injury, which showed IR injury and upregulated NOX2 expression as expected, accompanied by elevated H2O2 and nuclear p-MYL2 levels; these effects were attenuated by inhibition of myosin light chain kinase (MLCK). Next, we explored the functional relationship of nuclear p-MYL2 with NOX2 expression in H9c2 cell model of hypoxia-reoxygenation (HR) injury. In agreement with our in vivo findings, HR treatment increased apoptosis, NOX2 expression, nuclear p-MYL2 and H2O2 levels, and the increases were ameliorated by inhibition of MLCK or knockdown of MYL2. Finally, molecular biology techniques including co-immunoprecipitation (Co-IP), chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), DNA pull-down and luciferase reporter gene assay were utilized to decipher the molecular mechanisms. We found that nuclear p-MYL2 binds to the consensus sequence AGCTCC in NOX2 gene promoter, interacts with RNA polymerase II and transcription factor IIB to form a transcription preinitiation complex, and thus activates NOX2 gene transcription. Our results demonstrate that nuclear MYL2 plays an important role in IR injury by transcriptionally upregulating NOX2 expression to enhance oxidative stress in a phosphorylation-dependent manner.

Disulfide-stabilized trimeric hemagglutinin ectodomains provide enhanced heterologous influenza protection.

Influenza virus infection poses a continual menace to public health. Here, we developed soluble trimeric HA ectodomain vaccines by establishing interprotomer disulfide bonds in the stem region, which effectively preserve the native antigenicity of stem epitopes. The stable trimeric H1 ectodomain proteins exhibited higher thermal stabilities in comparison with unmodified HAs and showed strong binding activities towards a panel of anti-stem cross-reactive antibodies that recognize either interprotomer or intraprotomer epitopes. Negative stain transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis revealed the stable trimer architecture of the interprotomer disulfide-stapled WA11#5, NC99#2, and FLD#1 proteins as well as the irregular aggregation of unmodified HA molecules. Immunizations of mice with those trimeric HA ectodomain vaccines formulated with incomplete Freund's adjuvant elicited significantly more potent cross-neutralizing antibody responses and offered broader immuno-protection against lethal infections with heterologous influenza strains compared to unmodified HA proteins. Additionally, the findings of our study indicate that elevated levels of HA stem-specific antibody responses correlate with strengthened cross-protections. Our design strategy has proven effective in trimerizing HA ectodomains derived from both influenza A and B viruses, thereby providing a valuable reference for designing future influenza HA immunogens.

A Holistically-Guided Decoder for Deep Representation Learning With Applications to Semantic Segmentation and Object Detection.

Both high-level and high-resolution feature representations are of great importance in various visual understanding tasks. To acquire high-resolution feature maps with high-level semantic information, one common strategy is to adopt dilated convolutions in the backbone networks to extract high-resolution feature maps, such as the dilatedFCN-based methods for semantic segmentation. However, due to many convolution operations are conducted on the high-resolution feature maps, such methods have large computational complexity and memory consumption. To balance the performance and efficiency, there also exist encoder-decoder structures that gradually recover the spatial information by combining multi-level feature maps from a feature encoder, such as the FPN architecture for object detection and the U-Net for semantic segmentation. Although being more efficient, the performances of existing encoder-decoder methods for semantic segmentation are far from comparable with the dilatedFCN-based methods. In this paper, we propose one novel holistically-guided decoder which is introduced to obtain the high-resolution semantic-rich feature maps via the multi-scale features from the encoder. The decoding is achieved via novel holistic codeword generation and codeword assembly operations, which take advantages of both the high-level and low-level features from the encoder features. With the proposed holistically-guided decoder, we implement the EfficientFCN architecture for semantic segmentation and HGD-FPN for object detection and instance segmentation. The EfficientFCN achieves comparable or even better performance than state-of-the-art methods with only 1/3 of their computational costs for semantic segmentation on PASCAL Context, PASCAL VOC, ADE20K datasets. Meanwhile, the proposed HGD-FPN achieves higher mean Average Precision (mAP) when integrated into several object detection frameworks with ResNet-50 encoding backbones.

Variational Relational Point Completion Network for Robust 3D Classification.

Real-scanned point clouds are often incomplete due to viewpoint, occlusion, and noise, which hampers 3D geometric modeling and perception. Existing point cloud completion methods tend to generate global shape skeletons and hence lack fine local details. Furthermore, they mostly learn a deterministic partial-to-complete mapping, but overlook structural relations in man-made objects. To tackle these challenges, this paper proposes a variational framework, Variational Relational point Completion network (VRCNet) with two appealing properties: 1) Probabilistic Modeling. In particular, we propose a dual-path architecture to enable principled probabilistic modeling across partial and complete clouds. One path consumes complete point clouds for reconstruction by learning a point VAE. The other path generates complete shapes for partial point clouds, whose embedded distribution is guided by distribution obtained from the reconstruction path during training. 2) Relational Enhancement. Specifically, we carefully design point self-attention kernel and point selective kernel module to exploit relational point features, which refines local shape details conditioned on the coarse completion. In addition, we contribute multi-view partial point cloud datasets (MVP and MVP-40 dataset) containing over 200,000 high-quality scans, which render partial 3D shapes from 26 uniformly distributed camera poses for each 3D CAD model. Extensive experiments demonstrate that VRCNet outperforms state-of-the-art methods on all standard point cloud completion benchmarks. Notably, VRCNet shows great generalizability and robustness on real-world point cloud scans. Moreover, we can achieve robust 3D classification for partial point clouds with the help of VRCNet, which can highly increase classification accuracy.

Is a correlation-based investment strategy beneficial for long-term international portfolio investors?

Using negative to low-correlated assets to manage short-term portfolio risk is not uncommon among investors, although the long-term benefits of this strategy remain unclear. This study examines the long-term benefits of the correlation strategy for portfolios based on the stock market in Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and Latin America from 2000 to 2016. Our strategy is as follows. We develop five portfolios based on the average unconditional correlation between domestic and foreign assets from 2000 to 2016. This yields five regional portfolios based on low to high correlations. In the presence of selected economic and financial conditions, long-term diversification gains for each regional portfolio are evaluated using a panel cointegration-based testing method. Consistent across all portfolios and regions, our key cointegration results suggest that selecting a low-correlated portfolio to maximize diversification gains does not necessarily result in long-term diversification gains. Our empirical method, which also permits the estimation of cointegrating regressions, provides the opportunity to evaluate the impact of oil prices, U.S. stock market fluctuations, and investor sentiments on regional portfolios, as well as to hedge against these fluctuations. Finally, we extend our data to cover the years 2017-2022 and find that our main findings are robust. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40854-023-00471-9.

Glabridin Functions as a Quorum Sensing Inhibitor to Inhibit Biofilm Formation and Swarming Motility of Multidrug-Resistant Acinetobacter baumannii.

Objective: Acinetobacter baumannii is a hazardous bacterium that causes hospital-acquired nosocomial infections, and the advent of multidrug-resistant A. baumannii (MDR-AB) strains is concerning. Novel antibacterial therapeutic strategies must be developed. The biological effects of glabridin on MDR-AB were investigated in this study. Methods: The minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of glabridin against eight clinical MDR-AB strains were determined using the broth microdilution technique. Crystal violet staining was used to assess biofilm development, which has significant contribution to bacterial resistance. Swarming motility was measured according to surface growth zone of MDR-AB on LB agar medium. qRT-PCR was used to evaluate the expression of quorum sensing genes abaI and abaR. Glabridin and routinely used therapeutic antimicrobial agents were tested for synergistic action using the checkerboard method. Results: According to our findings, glabridin suppressed MDR-AB growth at high doses (512-1024 µg/mL). The 1/4 MIC of glabridin significantly decreased MDR-AB biofilm formation by 19.98% (P < 0.05), inhibited MDR-AB motility by 44.27% (P < 0.05), whereas the 1/2 MIC of glabridin dramatically reduced MDR-AB biofilm development by 27.43% (P < 0.01), suppressed MDR-AB motility by 50.64% (P < 0.05). Mechanistically, glabridin substantially downregulated the expression of quorum sensing-related genes abaI and abaR by up to 39.12% (P < 0.001) and 25.19% (P < 0.01), respectively. However, no synergistic effect between glabridin and antibacterial drugs was found. Conclusion: Glabridin might be a quorum sensing inhibitor that inhibits MDR-AB biofilm development and swarming motility.

A novel pathway of NADPH oxidase/vascular peroxidase 1 in mediating oxidative injury following ischemia-reperfusion.

Vascular peroxidase 1 (VPO1) can utilize reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated from NADPH oxidase (NOX) to catalyze peroxidative reactions. This study was performed to identify a novel pathway of NOX/VPO1 in mediating the oxidative injury following myocardial ischemia reperfusion (IR). In a rat model of myocardial IR, the infarct size, serum creatine kinase (CK) activity, apoptosis, NOX activity, NOX2 and VPO1 expression were measured. In a cell (rat heart-derived H9c2 cells) model of hypoxia/reoxygenation (HR), the apoptosis, NOX activity, NOX2 and VPO1 expression, and H(2)O(2) and HOCl levels were examined. In vivo, IR caused 54.8 ± 1.7 % infarct size in myocardium accompanied by elevated activities of CK, caspase-3 and NOX, up-regulated VPO1 expression and high numbers of myocardial apoptotic cells; these effects were attenuated by pretreatment with the inhibitor of NOX. In vitro, inhibition of NOX or silencing of NOX2 or VPO1 expression significantly suppressed HR-induced cellular apoptosis concomitantly with decreased HOCl production. Inhibition of NOX or silencing of NOX2 led to a decrease in H(2)O(2) production accompanied by a decrease in VPO1 expression and HOCl production. However, silencing of VPO1 expression did not affect NOX2 expression and H(2)O(2) production. H(2)O(2)-induced VPO1 expression was partially reversed by JNK or p38 MAPK inhibitor. Our results demonstrate a novel pathway of NOX2/VPO1 in myocardium, where VPO1 coordinates with NOX2 and amplifies the role of NOX-derived ROS in oxidative injury following IR.

Inhibition of vascular peroxidase alleviates cardiac dysfunction and apoptosis induced by ischemia-reperfusion.

Myeloperoxidase (MPO) is involved in myocardial ischemia-reperfusion (IR) injury and vascular peroxidase (VPO) is a newly identified isoform of MPO. This study was conducted to explore whether VPO is involved in IR-induced cardiac dysfunction and apoptosis. In a rat Langendorff model of myocardial IR, the cardiac function parameters (left ventricular pressure and the maximum derivatives of left ventricular pressure and coronary flow), creatine kinase (CK) activity, apoptosis, VPO1 activity were measured. In a cell (rat-heart-derived H9c2 cells) model of hypoxia-reoxygenation (HR), apoptosis, VPO activity, and VPO1 mRNA expression were examined. In isolated heart, IR caused a marked decrease in cardiac function and a significant increase in apoptosis, CK, and VPO activity. These effects were attenuated by pharmacologic inhibition of VPO. In vitro, pharmacologic inhibition of VPO activity or silencing of VPO1 expression significantly suppressed HR-induced cellular apoptosis. Our results suggest that increased VPO activity contributes to IR-induced cardiac dysfunction and inhibition of VPO activity may have the potential clinical value in protecting the myocardium against IR injury.

Beneficial effects of capsiate on ethanol-induced mucosal injury in rats are related to stimulation of calcitonin gene-related Peptide release.

Capsiate is a non-pungent analogue of capsaicin from CH-19 Sweet peppers. Capsaicin is reported to trigger calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) release through activation of transient receptor potential vanilloid subfamily member 1 (TRPV1) and produces beneficial effects on gastric mucosa. This study aimed to investigate whether capsiate is able to produce beneficial effects on gastric mucosa and whether the protective effects of capsipate occur through a mechanism involving the activation of TRPV1 and CGRP release. A rat model of gastric mucosal injury was established by the oral administration of acidified ethanol. Gastric tissues were collected for analysis of the gastric ulcer index, cellular apoptosis, activities of caspase-3, catalase and superoxide dismutase (SOD), and levels of CGRP, TNF-α, and malondialdehyde (MDA). Our results show that the acute administration of ethanol significantly increased the gastric ulcer index concomitantly with an increase in cellular apoptosis, caspase-3 activity, and TNF-α and MDA levels, as well as a decrease in the activities of catalase and SOD. Pretreatment with 1 mg/kg capsiate attenuated ethanol-induced gastric mucosal injury and cellular apoptosis accompanied by an increase in CGRP level, catalase, and SOD activities, and a decrease in caspase-3 activity, and TNF-α and MDA levels. The effects of capsiate were inhibited by capsazepine, an antagonist of TRPV1. These results suggest that capsiate is able to produce beneficial effects on ethanol-induced gastric mucosal injury. These effects are related to the stimulation of CGRP release through the activation of TRPV1.

Reconstruction of congenital pseudarthrosis of the clavicle with a barrel-shaped mono-cortical iliac crest autograft: A case report.

BACKGROUND: Congenital pseudarthrosis of the clavicle (CPC) is a rare congenital entity with unresolved aetiology and pathogenesis. Nearly 250 cases have been reported to date. CPC is characterized by a definite defect in the mid-clavicle at birth and is usually diagnosed when the deformity becomes evident in late childhood or adolescence. Surgical management is controversial, especially in asymptomatic children, with various techniques reported in the literature. CASE REPORT: We report a case of a 6-year-old boy who was diagnosed with CPC during a medical examination for primary school enrollment. Operative treatment included debridement of pseudoarthrosis, internal fixation with third tube plate, and barrel-shaped mono-cortical iliac crest autograft. RESULTS: A complete bone union was obtained 9 months after the operation, and satisfactory function and cosmetic appearance were observed 4 years and 3 months postoperatively. CONCLUSION: In our opinion, reconstruction with barrel-shaped mono-cortical iliac crest autograft was an effective and reproducible surgical technique to treat CPC.

Effect of Traditional Chinese Medicine on the Cardiovascular Diseases.

Background: Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is the health care system developed with the help of clinical trials that are based ideally on the scientific model of regulation. Objective: This systematic health care system relies on some specific unique theories and practical experiences to treat and cure diseases, thus enhancing the public's health. Review Methodology: The current review covers the available literature from 2000 to 2021. The data was collected from journals research articles, published books, thesis, and electronic databases, search engines such as Google Scholar, Elsevier, EBSCO, PMC, PubMed, ScienceDirect, Willey Online Library, Springer Link, and CNKI) searching key terms, cardiovascular disease, traditional Chinese medicines, natural products, and bioactive compounds. Full-length articles and abstracts were screened for the collection of information included in the paper. Results: Clinical trials on the TCM and basic research carried out on its mechanism and nature have led to the application and development of the perfect design of the research techniques, for example, twofold striking in acupuncture that aid in overcoming the limitations and resistances in integrating and applicability of these experiences and trials into the pre-existing biomedical models. Furthermore, TCM has also been utilized from ancient times to treat heart diseases in Asia, particularly in China, and is now used by people in many other areas. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is mainly developed by oxidative stress. Hence antioxidants can be beneficial in treating this particular disease. TCM has a wide variety of antioxidant components. Conclusion: The current review article summarizes the underlying therapeutic property of TCM and its mechanism. It also overviews the evidence of the mechanism of TCM action in CVD prevention by controlling oxidative stress and its signaling pathway.

An input-output structural decomposition analysis of changes in China's renewable energy consumption.

Governments actively encourage renewable energy use to deal with climate change and achieve carbon emission reduction targets. It is crucial to find out the driving factors that affect the utilization of renewable energy. Therefore, based on China's 2010-2016 input-output table, this paper uses the input-output model and structural decomposition analysis (SDA) to analyze the driving factors of renewable energy changes in the production end, household end, and the aggregate economy. The results show that the changes in the consumption structure (F) is the most crucial factor for renewable energy use, followed by technology progress (T) and final demand per capita (V). Sector SEHW (supply of electric power, heat power, and water) and MCRP (manufacture of coke and refined petroleum products) are the two vital sectors to achieve China's energy transition of the production level. However, as for households, the proportion of renewable energy has been declining. Hence, the government should promote renewable energy use and achieve the green transition in production and household levels.

Protective effect of phloroglucinol against myocardial ischaemia-reperfusion injury is related to inhibition of myeloperoxidase activity and inflammatory cell infiltration.

1. It has been shown that phloroglucinol has anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant properties. Both inflammatory cell infiltration and myeloperoxidase (MPO) activation play an important role in myocardial reperfusion injury. The aim of the present study was to explore the effect of phloroglucinol on myocardial reperfusion injury and the mechanisms involved. 2. Anaesthetized rats were pretreated with phloroglucinol (15 or 30 mg/kg, i.g.) or vehicle (5 mmol/L carboxymethyl cellulose sodium) 30 min prior to experimentation. The left main coronary artery was subjected to 1 h occlusion followed by 3 h reperfusion. Infarct size, the release of creatine kinase (CK), inflammatory cell infiltration, MPO activity and protein content, catalase in the blood and myocardium, and myocardial apoptosis were measured. 3. Following myocardial ischaemia and reperfusion in vehicle-treated rats, infarct size was 43.5 ± 3.7% (relative to the area at risk). Accompanying detrimental changes included elevated CK, enhanced inflammatory cell infiltration, high numbers of myocardial apoptotic cells, elevated caspase 3 activity, increased MPO activity and content in the plasma and myocardium and reduced catalase activity. These effects were attenuated by pretreatment with both doses of phloroglucinol (15 and 30 mg/kg, i.g.). 4. The results of the present study suggest that phloroglucinol protects the myocardium against ischaemia-reperfusion injury in rats and that its beneficial effects are related to inhibition of MPO activity and inflammatory cell infiltration.

Person Re-Identification With Deep Kronecker-Product Matching and Group-Shuffling Random Walk.

Person re-identification (re-ID) aims to robustly measure visual affinities between person images. It has wide applications in intelligent surveillance by associating same persons' images across multiple cameras. It is generally treated as an image retrieval problem: given a probe person image, the affinities between the probe image and gallery images (P2G affinities) are used to rank the retrieved gallery images. There exist two main challenges for effectively solving this problem. 1) Person images usually show significant variations because of different person poses and viewing angles. The spatial layouts and correspondences between person images are therefore vital information for tackling this problem. State-of-the-art methods either ignore such spatial variation or utilize extra pose information for handling the challenge. 2) Most existing person re-ID methods rank gallery images considering only P2G affinities but ignore the affinities between the gallery images (G2G affinity). Such affinities could provide important clues for accurate gallery image ranking but were only utilized in post-processing stages by current methods. In this article, we propose a unified end-to-end deep learning framework to tackle the two challenges. For handling viewpoint and pose variations between compared person images, we propose a novel Kronecker Product Matching operation to match and warp feature maps of different persons. Comparing warped feature maps results in more accurate P2G affinities. To fully utilize all available P2G and G2G affinities for accurately ranking gallery person images, a novel group-shuffling random walk operation is proposed. Both Kronecker Product Matching and Group-shuffling Random Walk operations are end-to-end trainable and are shown to improve the learned visual features if integrated in the deep learning framework. The proposed approach outperforms state-of-the-art methods on Market-1501, CUHK03 and DukeMTMC datasets, which demonstrates the effectiveness and generalization ability of our proposed approach. Code is available at https://github.com/YantaoShen/kpm_rw_person_reid.

FDI, economic growth, and carbon emissions of the Chinese steel industry: new evidence from a 3SLS model.

Determine the main factors affecting carbon emissions of the Chinese steel industry is indispensable commitments to achieve the sustainable development of China. Hereby, based on the Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology (STIPRAT) model, this paper combines the economic growth function, carbon emission production function, and the FDI function of the Chinese steel industry, and uses the three-stage least square equation model (3SLS) to analyze the relationship between China's economic growth, carbon emissions in the steel industry, and FDI (foreign direct investment) inflows. The results document a complete two-way causal relationship of three variables in the whole country and the Western region, while the relationship in the Eastern region and the Central region is not complete. Moreover, there are no bidirectional causal relationship between carbon emissions and FDI in the Eastern region, while only bidirectional causality between carbon emissions and FDI in the Central region. These findings are of great significance for the Chinese steel industry to formulate effective emission reduction policies.